How to Start a Blogging Website

Are you fed up with your daily 9 -5 work routine? Do you love your current job? Or are you doing it just to earn a living? Are there any other ways you can make money? Are you young enough to change your career path? These are the exact questions which used to hover over my mind for days. Being a backpacker, I always wished to do something related to travel. Following various travel bloggers helped me a lot during my travels. If they could do it why not me? I thought why shouldn’t I start one of mine?

Start a blogging website

To start a blogging website is the simplest way to share ideas and showcase your prowess as a blogger. And if you want to, you can use it to build your career and make money. But remember blogging will not bring you millions overnight. Like any other business, it requires time, diligence, and commitment.

My readers often ask me how to start a blogging website and make money online. After explaining the process of starting a blog multiple times, I thought it would be much easier to document a step-by-step guide on how to become a blogger. Setting up a blog is cheap, and the steps are the same whether you are learning how to start a fashion, music, food, travel, business or lifestyle blog. So be wise in picking a niche.

With an increase in technology, creating a blogging website has become easy nowadays. No prior knowledge of HTML, coding or graphics design needed. It just takes half an hour of effort, and you can have your blog website up and be running.Woohoo!! So how to get started? Creating the blog of your dreams isn’t far away, so keep on reading to learn more.

Please note if you get stuck while making your blog, please feel free to get in touch via [email protected], and I’ll be glad to help you out for free.

1 – Choose a perfect name for your Blog

It’s the Game of the Name!!! Finding the perfect name is arguably the hardest and most challenging aspect of starting a blog. It should be short, simple, easy to pronounce, easy to remember, easy to type, and easy to share. After weeks of brainstorming by writing down a bunch of words, I finally settled for On a Cheap Trip.

Few key things to remember while choosing your blog name and URL:

Avoid using common words related to your topic if you want to stand out from the crowd. For e.g.: if you are starting a travel blog; avoid using words like wanderlust, Nomad, backpacker, vagabond, travel as they have all been done to death.

Choose a name that will be long-lasting. Don’t pick names like “IndiaBackpacking” as you never know you might travel and write about other countries.

Select a name that best describes you and your niche. The reason I choose “On a Cheap Trip “because I wanted to change people’s perception of travel being expensive. I try my best to suggest people the cheapest way to travel to the place.

Prefer .com over the others because people are so used to websites ending with .com that they’ll likely forget any other domain extension.

Try to avoid two-word names, where the last and first letters of the words are the same — i.e. Travel Lovers – travellovers.com.

Note: Most web hosting sites offer domain free if you are purchasing hosting from them.

2 – Choose Hosting for your Blog

Some of you might be thinking what the hell is Hosting? Whatever data (pics, text, videos, etc.) you put in your blog, it needs to be stored somewhere on the internet. So that whenever you type in a domain name, your data is displayed. A web host provides space on its server so that other computers around the world can access your website with the help of a network or modem.

I recommend new bloggers to get hosting with Bluehost as it is quite affordable ($3.95 a month), their customer service is excellent and can usually fix issues within minutes, and also you’ll get a domain name for free.

As it’s just the start of your blogging, I would recommend the cheapest plan, for $3.95 per month as you are not sure of your site success at the early stages. You can anytime upgrade to higher plans when required. There’s no need for a big investment right now.

Step 3: Check to see if your blog name (domain name) is available. If not, go back to step 1 and re -brainstorm an alternative. Prefer a .com name over the others, and you want it to be something that people will remember.

If you’ve already bought a domain name on another site, you can enter it in the other tab.

Step 4: You’ll be taken to a page where you can decide on your package and some add-ons.Uncheck all the items in package information which you don’t need. I would suggest unchecking all.

Wasn’t that easy? You’ve now set up your hosting and domain name.

Step 5: After you’ve registered your domain name and got your hosting package, the next thing you want to do is install WordPress. WordPress is what will run the website.

3 – Installing WordPress

Installing WordPress with your Bluehost Account is super easy. After you login to Bluehost, scroll down until you see the following box, then click on Install WordPress.

On the next page, click the green start button to install it on your site:

Next, select your domain name and click “check domain”:

Fill in your appropriate details on the next page and click install now.

Welcome to blogger world!!Now you can proudly say that you own a Blog!!!

Step 6: From there you will login to your blog from www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin

Type in your username and password, and you’re in!

4 – Choosing the appropriate Theme

What does the theme do? A “theme” determines the look and feel of your blog. Go to the Appearance tab; there you will find all the free WordPress themes. But, if you want to take blogging seriously and eventually make money with your blog, you should buy a premium design as they offer a bit more uniqueness, flexibility, and functionality. Premium themes can cost anywhere from $25-$300. There are lots of places online to buy premium themes. Here are a few places to try:

You may also want to have a cool logo created that can be done on Fiverr. A professional logo makes your site stand out from the crowd.

5 – Installing essential plugins

Another step when learning about how to start a blog is what plugins to use? Plugins are a great way to add additional features to a WordPress-powered site. You don’t want to have too many plugins as they can slow down your site.

6 – Create Post and Pages

Aren’t they same? Not at all!!! The difference between a page and a post is that a page is a static content that you can find in your header, but a post is a blog post that gets “buried” as you write more and more. This one which you are reading is a post.

You are done!! Wasn’t that easy!!! You’ve set up your primary website.

Now the Million Dollar Question. How to earn money from blogging?

Making money with your blog isn’t easy. It’s pretty damn hard. But it is certainly possible!!Just keep your focus on good content writing and wait for my blog on “How to make money with your Blog.”

Creating a successful blog won’t happen overnight! You have to be patient and patient. Rewards won’t be far away!!Happy Blogging!!!

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14 thoughts on “How to Start a Blogging Website”

I randomly came through your blog on google.Once I started reading it,I couldn’t stop.Everything is explained so crisply and precisely.I love travelling so much and want to do it in budget.You’re my next travel blogger to follow. 🙂

Hey abhi, your posts are just awesome and unique.
For this post, I have a query , whether a domain and hosting purchased from godaddy , can make free website using wordpress. I downloaded the zip file from WordPress site, but they are asking for database details in a .php file.

Thank you so much!! Yes I have purchased the domain and hosting from Go-daddy. In go-daddy you can login to cpanel and directly install WordPress. Search for some YouTube video regarding this and you will get better understanding.

Hi Abhishek,
It’s nice reading your blogs. I am facing an issue in contact form 7 plugin. I have created a form for my website. When I try to submit information to the form, it flashes an error “There was an error trying to send your message. “. Can you help me with that? It would be really great.

Thanks for the appreciation priyanka 🙂 No issues if you have a free WordPress one.You can entirely transfer your blog/website from free wordpress hosting to a paid hosting.Let me know if you need help.

Thanks for the appreciation.If you really looking for trustable service go for Bluehost though it is little expensive, but it’s all worth!!GoDaddy provides services at low cost and I am currently using their services.But I am not satisfied and will soon be changing my hosting provider.